Conclusion
All these emerging technologies seem to be enabling an online social networking system that appears to be effecting a cultural and procedural change in business and other allied institutions. How they can be harnessed and exploited in the educational arena has yet to be fully investigated and it will be intriguing to see which ๙ the particular resources, systems and technologies briefly outlined here prove to be most effective in the near future. Even now some consolidation has occurred; Skype, Flickr and del jcio.us have all been bought up by larger commercial businesses.
It is difficult to peer into the future and predict with any certainty what may happen. But from the commercial credence that firms are putting on personalised data and tagging of information, it would suggest that similar innovations may be mirrored in the educational arena.
Integrated learning and management web-based systems should certainly offer far more scope for working within a personalised teaching and learning agenda. Students and teachers will have far more flexibility about how, what and where they team.
Underpinning this, web connectivity is likely to become an 'always-on' utility like heat light and water. How we choose to exploit these developments is still a matter of conjecture. But the one thing we cannot do is ignore them